Some Sophomore Pre-Thanksgiving Perspectives

Hello again! It's almost Thanksgiving break! Woot. This also means that there's approximately a month left in the semester - what?!

The thoughts spinning through everyone's minds are about how they're going to complete their semester final projects. I love how Olin students are fueled by a passion to build and make their projects work well rather than worry about numeric grades. This means we often have a healthy mix of both exams/problem sets to worry about and subsystems of a project to spice up the queue of assignments. Whee!

Recently this week, nearly everyone I know has been overwhelmed by midterms (it's not even the middle of the semester! Why is this vector calculus test called a midterm? Regardless, that was a fun experience, especially with the group oral exam. Thanks Linearity!) and intermediate project deliverables this week (These are slightly more fun - they involve lasers, tinkering, and 3D modeling, not necessarily in that order).

Speaking of projects, today my entrepreneurship class team installed a bed in the dining hall to advertise our BedDesk - a swivel desk which attaches to the frame of your dorm bed to improve your study/relax experience above your mattress.

Grace Ahn ('2016) giving a sales pitch for the BedDesk, a swivel desk which attaches to your dorm bed frame! (project for The Entrepreneurial Initiative)

Speaking of Thanksgiving, what are your plans for the break? The possibilities range from staying on campus for an Olin Thanksgiving celebration, roadtripping throughout mountains, or flying back to the west coast to spend time with your family/local friends for the week.

As for me, I'm super excited to escape the Olin bubble for a week. I'm from the Bay Area but have the lovely opportunity to adventure with one of my best friends to Maryland. Sometimes in a campus in as small and quirky as Olin, it's helpful to have a breath of fresh air to appreciate it fully - there have definitely been a few times when the Olin bubble effect has been overwhelming and stressful, in both social and academic ways. Olin is definitely still a home outside of home for me, but I need to get away for a while. This semester has been rough in its own ways.

Speaking of off-campus adventures, there are plenty of ways to pop the Olin bubble even if only temporarily - these include transportations such as vehicles, hovercraft scooters, cars... and of course, the GO Bikes! GO stands for Greening Olin, and is the organization responsible for the communal bike share program at Olin.

This semester Jennfier Anderson '16 (also an OLINsider blogger!) and me have begun revamping the GO bike program. This included repairing the bikes from last year, adding some new bikes to our fleet, and improving the bike space for Olin students. Our most recent pursuit was implementing a training program for students - bikes are a communal resource and users must be aware of how to use them safely, just like the power tools in the machine shop.

We're also planning on organizing bike repair workshops for students interested in learning more about bike repairs and tinkering - mostly on basic yet fundamental bike repair techniques like replacing/patching flat tires, brake systems, truing wheels, chains, and all that jazz. Stay tuned for more GO bike updates this school year!